


Music from the Hills of Teena

by Excavatrice



Category: Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: F/M, Lost and Found, Love/Hate, Music, Singing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4020745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Excavatrice/pseuds/Excavatrice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riddick reluctantly takes on responsibillity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sky objects

**Author's Note:**

> This is first part of the translation of my short story "Musik fra Tinebakkerne".

Riddick saw the three Buzzers hunt the imposing space transporter through the skies, saw them shoot down the grand vessel. He followed the faltering emergency landing with his eyes. He calculated the distance to the wreck to be three days walking from his present camp. He tended to his traps and disabled them temporarily. He broke up, geared with a canteen, a sack of dried meat and himself.

\---

The first time Teena awoke it was day. A ray of light disturbed her eyes through a crack in the lid of the coffin where she lay. Frightened, she tried to sit up, but discovered that her wrists were fastened on her hips. She pushed the coffin lid with her head and did manage to expand the chink a bit. The effort triggered a cramp in an abdominal muscle. She tried to rest the muscle in her confined position. She wanted to kick the lid off with her feet, but discovered that they were also constrained.  
”Hello?” she yelled. She was thirsty and her throat was swollen, her voice didn't carry. She was bothered by some foul smell. She didn't remember how she had ended here. She was on her way to the dress rehearsal and then ... what? She remembered only darkness.

\---

Lots of loot in the wreck to salvage: fuel, medicine, weapons the attackers had overlooked, a box of ship's biscuits, more than Riddick could carry in one take. He had to hide the stuff in a crevice a minute away. The autopilot had tried it's best, but nonetheless the space ship had almost split in the harsh landing; he went directly through her side. Everywhere traces of the violence redecorated the interior. Bloody handprints, desperate marks from the assault. The pilot hung rotting in his seat, hit by the first direct hit. The slaughter of the crew had followed, remains of the bodies lying shattered, partly undressed and mutilated. With his knife he ended the misery of a groaning body, who had his intestines pulled out.  
Riddick found the cargo hold empty, except for a big box, marked “handle with care, poison hazard”.  
Such a little cargo hold, in such a big ship, a large crew ... Riddick wondered. He tried pushing the box, to see what was behind it, but it didn't budge from the spot. He left the cargo hold, went outside the ship, followed the crevice in the hull with his eyes, jumped up on the wing and looked down through the crack. He lowered himself to the hidden room behind the cargo hold. The room was filled with Cryo boxes. In every box a body of a young person, pretty young boys and girls with a distinct look and a special race. They had to be of the same people. Riddick had not seen anyone looking just like them before. He guessed they had to be the loot of a slave hunter; those young people were just the Necromongers liking. Riddick's attitude to his fellow humans fell to a nadir.  
The Cryostasis had been interrupted out of schedule. The lids of the boxes were locked from outside. The boxes, prevented from running contingency, had suffocated and poisoned the young people, when the electricity ran out because of the bolted lids. No reason to stay any longer in this sad monument of greed. Riddick turned around decisively.

\---

Teena woke up not remembering when she had fallen asleep. It was night, pitch black. She heard rustlings and steps. She tried yelling, but did only manage a weak: ”Help”. She scratched the edges of the coffin with her fingers. A set of predators eyes flashed above her head. Now she could scream: Loud and clear in the whistle register of her voice. The eyes disappeared. Instead, she barely discerned the shadow of a big man. She thought he must have scared the predator away.

\---

Riddick, ready to jump out from the hidden room, heard a faint scratching from the other end of the room. One of the boxes was torn loose from its plinth and had smashed the opposite wall during the emergency landing, its lid broken to pieces in the violent crash. He lifted a piece of the lid and was met by a penetrating scream. He dropped the shard and protected both his ears with his hands.  
He had to use his knife to cut the girls hands and feet loose from the cuffs holding her to the box. He cut teeths too in anger. This reminded him of how the Furyans had been persecuted and sold as slaves. The doped girl was mumbling nonsense and he thought of how she had been confined to the box for 3 days, thirsting, no means of freeing her selves.  
If he gave her some water, she would surely survive until the Millitsia shoved up, then they could take responsibility for her.

\---

”Hey, hey, shh” the man said with a very deep voice. He pushed off the remainders of the lid off, and tried to pull her up, but discovered she was stuck. In the darkness, Teena couldn't see what happened, but soon her arms and legs were free. He helped her sit, holding an arm round her back.  
”Water … can I have som water?” she wispered.  
He stared at her. What she had believed to be predators eyes, belonged to the man. They were shining in the midst of the shadow of her face.  
He crooked his head. ”Water?”  
At last he gave her a canister. She drank greedily until he teared the canister from her an said something she didn't comprehend.  
He lifted out from the coffin, and made her stand on the floor. Her legs shaked. The darkness disappeared in a whirl of sparkles behind her eyes.

\---

The girl fainted again. She was weak and soft. Someone who never starved, never had tried to thirst before, not hardened by troubled times. Not an orphan, not used to take care of her selves. She wasn't a merchant who could fight back, not a cynical whore, able to tackle any jerk, not a hunched maid, early aged, with whipping scars on her shins.  
He wasn't sure the Militia could offer the girl a better destiny than what the slavers had in mind. Why not save her the coming hardship? Let her sleep here forever, with the youngsters from her tribe. Let her keep her face smooth and unworried, her body without scars, no calluses on hands and soul.  
He pulled his sharpest knife, the one in his boot shaft, held it for a long time over her throat, before he hesitantly put it back in its place. He picked up the girl and carried her with him.

\---

Teena awoke, her chin adhered to the bare shoulder of the man. She'd drooled on him during sleep, while he carried her. ”I can walk,” she mumled, and wriggled loose. He did'nt let go of her arm, but dragged her along.  
They were outside, went fast, crossing sand and stones. The doped numbness thinned and disappeared. Now she was able to see a little. Stars in the sky, rose brightening in the horizon. The air filled with spicy smells of plants. The smell of the man she half ran beside: Leather, sweat, metal, and something she couldn't place.  
At once big man stood still, listening. He dragged her with him, covering them under a cliff. He held a finger against her mouth, as she opened it to ask what was going on. He pointed back the way they came. She stared into the darkness, but couldn't see. Some men yelled in the distance. Unseen vehicles roared. Flashlights made the darkness around them more dense. Then: An explosion and a wave of pressure.  
A strange contraption were enlightened by the flames who devoured it. Tiny people around the building told her it had to be 6-7 meters high. No – it was not a building, she saw; it was a kind of a plane, a plump vessel with sort wings.  
The car sounds lessened and disappeared.  
Teena wanted out from the cramped cave, but the man laid his arm round her shoulder, folded his hand round her mouth, held her down for a long time after the yelling people had driven away. The distant pyre burned out. She felt how cold and naked she was; she was shivering. Only the bare arm of the man offered some warmth. The sunrise painted high altitude feathery clouds pink. At last the man let her go, and together they wiggled out from the shelter under the cliff.  
The man dragged his sleeveless jersey of an gave it to her. It fittet her almost like a dress.  
Now it had dawned, so she could see her savior – or abductor. She had reached the fatalist stage of confusion and shock and gave him the look, eyeing him from head to toe. He let her look, with a hint of a smile.  
He was large as a heavyweight boxer. But his nose and ears didn't have the smashed boxer look. When he was at ease, he was alert; when he moved, it was fast, from one series of moves to another series of confident moves, like a dancer.  
She was thinking, that he would be just as embarrassed as a cat, when performing a clumsy jump. He was dressed in what her friends called role playing attire. Cargo pants without pockets stabbed with a pair of long laced boots. Two knives in a wide belt. Another knife in one of the boot shafts.  
The sun caressed the world with her golden fingers, hushed the night creatures and the man put on welding glasses. That made her smile, it looked silly, she thought.  
”My name is Teena,” she said, portruding her hand to a handshake.  
”Call me Riddick,” the man said; took her hand, looked at it, and for the first time since she met him, he seemed out of balance.

\---

They went through a semidesert, where spiky bushes and kakti-like growths didn't cast substantial shadow. Teena had never seen such plants before. She thought she maybe had been flown to the other side of the Earth.  
”Where are we?,” she asked Riddick.  
”The high plains south of Unamari.”  
”And in which country is Unamari?”  
”It's in no mans country. The Unamarians are free.”  
”I mean, is this Australia? Or Indonesia?  
”Don't know those places.” Ridddick picked up speed to escape more questions.  
Teena had the lungs of a singer and did not lose her breath running; she tried a new angle: ”But where are we going then? Can I fly home from there? I'm in the middle of the 'Atlantis' rehearsals, and if I am not coming back soon, my stupid stand-in will take over my role.”  
Riddick stopped. ”Listen! First we'll go that way until we have bypassed the black grounds, and then, we'll go that way.” He turned and pointed, ” until we reach down those hills there, nobody named them yet, but we can name them The Hills of Teena, if it makes you happy, and now, shut up!”  
Teena stared in the direction Riddick had pointed. She lifted her hands, pulled her hair, looking dumbfounded. A giant striped planet, white and pale blue against the day sky, had risen unseen, while they walked in the other direction. It showed half its enormous disc. A broad ring was casting a dark shadow on the planet.


	2. Furyan folk music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Off beat interlude with strange meters and Furyan folk music. And tiny tined tinymals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long gap in translations. The last part will hopefully come shortly.

Teena wanted to go home, but she couldn't tell where home was. She called her planet The Earth, the moon of the planet: The Moon, and the star simply: The Sun, like a little child calling her parents Mum and Dad. Riddick had never himself been such a child, of course, he would have named his parents Dead & Gone, had anyone asked.

”If you can't tell the proper name of your planet, you can't go home,” he said. And what kind of star is ”The Sun”? Can you show me the position on a map? If you can draw a precise drawing of the star constellations as seen from your home planet, maybe the ship navigator can calculate where it is.”  
He didn't notice her downcast frown. He thought, that if she knew where she lived, he would dig out the little space ship, he'd hidden and fly her home and get some peace.  
When Teena started talking, she didn't stop:”Do you know this song?,” she asked, and sang at least three verses of said song. ”Or this one? Don't you know any songs? A lullaby? A love song? Do you like to dance? Are those kind of eyes average in your people? What's the name of that plant? Is it edible? How many planets does the Necromongers rule? Do they care for music? But the Unamarians, then? Are there other, what you call them, empires?” She went on and on until he nearly regretted not silencing her in the crashed transporter.  
It was difficult keeping Teena alive. He supported her hand while she passed by on an a creaking branch, still talking, over an abysmal gorge. He shooed absurdly big and ugly predators away, she attracted whith her noise. He sucked out the poison, when she was bitten by bugs. He broached the precious emergency supplies packet; she didn't like jerky. When night fell, he build her a bivouac, though he preferred to travel by night. He made her moccasins, to prevent her from collecting all the worlds thorns in her fragile soles. Teena took his help without noticing it, and newer perceived the constant life threatening dangers.  
Three days it took to travel to the crash landing site, and twice the time to travel back. When Teena saw his camp, she seemed disappointed, and he became oddly embarrassed, when she asked for how long he'd stayed there, and why he lived that way.

Teena didn't get how she had ended up on a distant planet with a grumpy hermit. She still believed that it had to temporarily, some misunderstanding waiting to be cleared. Riddick walked around talking about the plane, she arrived with. He became mad each time she raised the subject. If she went on, he said something nasty, that made her shut up and sulk for a while. But her insatiate curiosity soon made her forget her grudge.  
She missed entertainment and music and someone to perform music with. She became bored, when the huge planet periodically hid the sun and an extra night fell. She urged him for hours and finally made him sing her a Furyan folk song. He sang it once, his silver gaze turned away, husky and shy. She didn't recognize the musical mode or the strange rhythm. She wished to hear it more times, but he said: ”Enough! One of us has to hunt. Sleep now.”

”What if there's a monster, while you go?” Tina asked.  
”You'll climb up there.” He pointed at a tall tree.  
”What if it climbs up there after me?”  
Reluctantly Riddick handed her one of his knives.  
Teena peeled a broad, flat branch of its bark and drew a keyboard on it. She hummed, thinking of new songs. She heard the background music in her head, moving her fingers on the branch. She mixed a piece of the Furian folk music into the song, along with the howling of the night critters. She wondered whether ”moon” and ”soon” was too ordinary. She made a funny composition with two contrasting rythms – one steady and heavy, the other syncopated offbeat.

When Riddick returned, the knife lay forgotten in a heap of froggs several meters away from Teena. She sat engulfed in her singing and her silent keyboard, her hair behind her ears and a black smudge on her chin.  
Around her, in a wide circle, a pack of tinymals with shiny maws surrounded her, their tails swinging in anticipation.  
Riddick stepped on a twig and the pack hastily fled.  
Teena looked up, smiling: ” You're back already?”


End file.
